01 May 2007

News: DC Youth Pride, Gay Rights Rally in Albany, Bow Wow

· Out in DCpreviews the upcoming Youth Pride, whose keynote speaker will be out former NBA player John Amaechi. Leroy Hardwoooden (left) has attended Youth Pride for the past three years. "It’s actually like Martin Luther King Day. It makes us happy, because it lets us know that we are accepted," the 18-year-old Hardwooden explains. "Not all of us get accepted at home, you know, so it’s nice that we can come together at a park and get together with our kind. It’s like a holiday for gay kids.”

· On Thursday, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on legislation that would add crimes based on sexuality to the federal hate crime law. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes
Prevention Act was introduced in March and passed a key committee last week. The bill has strong bi-partisan support and is expected to pass.

· Privacy concerns are raised after the Illinois House proposes to written consent requirements for HIV testing. According to The Chicago Tribune, the bill would enact the recent CDC recommendations that said HIV tests should be part of routine medical care for people
aged 13 to 64, and, that requirements for written consent and pretest
counseling should be dropped.

· Right now, more than 1000 LGBT persons are in Albany to rally and lobby state legislators on behalf of Gov. Eliot Spizer's newly-proposed same-sex marriage bill. Pride Agenda, the new blog by the Empire State Pride Agenda, is live-blogging from the event and notes "there has not been this large of a community presence in Albany since the 1971 March on Albany."